i. You don’t start measuring at the ground, 

you’ve got to go below that. 

Send a man down to the fire, seek center

 

or cut my finger on the dryness of it:

my mother’s car, ii. many years circa me. 

 

Its wheel could be a planet, too. 

I’ve grown into someone who can see headlighted paths

and choose not to swerve into them. 

 

Still, I could save from another physics class, from

iii. following the tall pole of his hair into a firedrill. 

I can think I’m so adult and then, firedrill. 

 

I can think I’ve outgrown elementary boy notetaking days 

but I watch him & ginger 

smile in unsecluded corner & can’t help but think

she should know better iv.

 

two penned lines make a heart. Three more a star. 

I’m covering my hands like his

so he knows I pay attention. 

It doesn’t matter one radius squared 

or the mass of the spacecraft, 

just how far you force its orbit. 

 

I wish this place would burn. I wish he were the type to make it. 

 

v, sunny window of a boy, through you I’d like to watch

cars commuting to sandwiches. These are the nicer thoughts,

of a nice sit-down place makes me wanna look up 

at someone sitting across and he’s

leaning in, isn’t this place sit-down nice, smiling, isn’t this your pen, aren’t you falling, yes

 

vi. (The Earth is fire where it matters. 

That’s what makes orbit pull.)

 

vii. but the ground keeps moving. He explains 

to the front of the room a bike, 

tripping over pebbles, makes a planet-wheel

of its tangential spikes. 

 

Maybe I’d understand if I could look at his arms but anyways I hear them

snap together closed like the spokes of a clock. 

If it didn’t all move at the same speed, it’d fall apart. 

 

viii. The man from the center of the Earth came back

(singed eyebrows)

and said NOBODY KNOWS WHAT IT MEANS 

BUT ALL THE CALCULATIONS WERE OFF 

BY THE SAME NUMBER

SO THEY CALLED IT  UNIVERSAL. 

 

viii. I think about him while driving,

the lines on his palm curled around 

some gifted drink, some wheel far out of orbit from mine. 

 

Lean over the desk while I try to ignore you

and tell me that it doesn’t matter how fast I’m going

with tires slipping on ice– velocity cancels.